1and1 Blog Romaniahttp://blog.1and1.ro
1and1 Romania BlogTue, 15 Sep 2015 08:33:23 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8Agile Toolbox, episode #1 – How to start a state-of-art applicationhttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/09/15/agile-toolbox-episode-1-how-to-start-a-state-of-art-application/
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 08:33:23 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2857Let’s give a little background here… in our day-to-day activity, we sometimes struggle when we start a new project. And from here to project failure it’s not a long way. At Delivery Management we often hear that it’s too time-consuming to estimate a complete backlog and try to get an idea about the project size […]

]]>Let’s give a little background here… in our day-to-day activity, we sometimes struggle when we start a new project.

And from here to project failure it’s not a long way.

At Delivery Management we often hear that it’s too time-consuming to estimate a complete backlog and try to get an idea about the project size and that we should rather do just-in-time estimation and release planning.

So what can we do to answer the natural desire of our sponsors and different stakeholders to know more or less how big their project is and how to approach it? Well, for this we have the Affinity tool.

We thought to make an exercise. Let’s take one completely new application, gather a group of developers and see if we can actually achieve our goals by running an Affinity process.

First step was to find an app idea that was easy to grasp for everyone and write down the features. The appointed PO took his new role very seriously:

And the rest is history: we played the Product Owner and Scrum Master roles, several enthusiastic colleagues joined with their superskills and in less than 3 hours we had all the ingredients to properly start a new application:

– A common vision of the product and of the product roadmap as envisioned by our PO

– A decision on the technologies to be employed

– A sketch of the technical solution

– An estimated backlog (in SPs)

– A rough idea of how long the project will take, obtained with the Wideband Delphi technique

– The list of assumptions

– Some risks we could already foresee

– An idea on how to approach the project

– And last but not least… the eagerness to start, because everyone was already IN

It is a very powerful tool, 2h45min and we already knew so much about what it takes to build our app.

Agile promotes individuals and interactions so what better way to achieve great software than to bring people together since the very beginning, present them the vision and let them draw the solution?

The feedback was also positive, even if we were running a bit out of time at the end.

We’ll definitely do this workshop again (and adjust a bit the scope to match the proposed timeframe) so please stay tuned if you’ve missed the first one.

Or, if you want to try it in your upcoming project and need help setting things up, pay us a visit at the 14th floor.

]]>Chrome DevTools – 10 lesser-known DevTools featureshttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/09/07/chrome-devtools-10-lesser-known-devtools-features/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/09/07/chrome-devtools-10-lesser-known-devtools-features/#respondMon, 07 Sep 2015 12:38:10 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2826Chrome DevTools is a popular tool for frontend debugging these days, with new features being added frequently. In this post we’ll go beyond the common patterns and highlight features that are perhaps less known, but useful nonetheless. 1. Get inspected element There are a few situations where you would want to access the last […]

]]>Chrome DevTools is a popular tool for frontend debugging these days, with new features being added frequently. In this post we’ll go beyond the common patterns and highlight features that are perhaps less known, but useful nonetheless.

1. Get inspected element

There are a few situations where you would want to access the last inspected element (from the Elements panel):

– for quick debugging inside the console: the element can be accessed via the $0 global variable (see for yourself: console.log($0))

– for writing tests using Selenium: in Selenium you can locate the element on the page using its XPath, and luckily Chrome has an option (right click element in the Elements panel) to copy XPath

– to use in your JavaScript code: to access that element you can copy its CSS path (right click element in the Elements panel) first and then select it (via document.querySelector for example)

2. Console features beyond .log

– console.trace() prints a stack trace from the point of the method call (which is a less hacky way of doing console.log(new Error().stack)); this is useful for determining what part of the code is calling the current function for example

4. Store as global variable

When paused at a breakpoint we can inspect locally scoped objects in the console, but we might also want to keep track of them for later inspection as well. Instead of manually storing such an object as a global variable in the console, DevTools has a handy option to “Store as global variable” by right clicking on it in the Sources panel (Scopes section on the right).

5. Snippets

DevTools provides a “snippets” section within “Source” panel which allows us to manage a list of scripts that can be injected onto a page. These things can range from inject a script into a page to printing out cookies or event more complex tasks. The point of this feature is to allow code reusability during debugging without having to resort to other tricks (such as using bookmarks for example).

6. Replay Ajax requests

There are situations when Ajax requests return an unexpected result or even an error. For replicating the request one might think we need to click the button that triggered it (or replicate the series of actions that triggered it). Fortunately there’s an easier way with DevTools:

– an option is to open the Network panel, right click on the Ajax request and click ‘Replay XHR’

– another way of doing the same thing is to click on ‘Copy as cURL’ (again, Network panel > right click request) and run the command into the terminal

7. Toggle element state

There are other styles to be applied to an element besides that of its regular state. For example a button could look differently when hovering over it, the same way a visited link is diffent than a regular link. These special states are the following: active, hover, focus, visited.

You could manually trigger these states by yourself, but you wouldn’t be able to edit their styles in DevTools as well (once you’ll open DevTools the special state of the will be gone – except for visited links).

But lucky for us there are solutions to force an element’s state with DevTools:

– in the Elements panel you can right click on the element and select ‘Force Element State’, then choose the preffered state

– the second option would be to select the element from the Elements panel, then go to the ‘Styles’ section on the right and click on the ‘Toggle Element State’ icon (the 2nd one)

8. DOM breakpoints

Sometimes an element changes and we would like to determine what part of the code triggered that change. DOM breakpoints are a good fit for these kind of situations, since they can pause the execution whenever an element is removed, its attributes are changed or there are subtree modifications.

To add a breakpoint simply right click on an element (in the Elements panel), select Break on.. and check the situations where you want the breakpoint to be added to. Now when the DOM element is being changed the execution will be paused and you will see what caused the update in the Sources panel.

9. Test responsive design and bad connections

If you want to see how an application feels like on a smartphone with a bad connection, you don’t have to leave your browser. By clicking on the smartphone icon near the DevTools panels on the left side you enter the Device Mode. Here you will be able to setup the viewport to match known smartphones/tablets, as well as throttle the network connection to simulate bad connections.

10. Locate an element by its selector

Let’s assume that you are visiting a relatively big page and you’re looking for a specific element. You search through source code of the page and you find that element. For the sake of the argument we’ll say that it has an id named instructions.

The next step would be to go to the Console panel and paste the following code:

inspect(document.querySelector('#instructions'));

What’s going on here?

- document.querySelector() will return the DOM element

– the inspect(element) function will open the Elements panel and select the element

At this point you will be able to take a look at the element’s DOM structure, checkout its styles or inspect other stuff.

But we can achieve more than that, to actually have a look at the element on the page. To do that just right click on the element in the Elements panel and select ‘Scroll into view’. This will scroll to the element and highlight it, so mission acomplished.

Conclusion

While you might not need to master all DevTools features, it’s a good thing to be aware of these tricks. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up as those people using DevTools as their IDE.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/09/07/chrome-devtools-10-lesser-known-devtools-features/feed/0A Story for the Hacker In Youhttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/25/a-story-for-the-hacker-in-you/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/25/a-story-for-the-hacker-in-you/#respondThu, 25 Jun 2015 12:13:11 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2805Dare to Hack! Have you ever dreamt to be a Hacker?… At least for a few hours? Did you ever take part in a Hackathon? I had the chance to be the Host in Bucharest for our internal 1&1 Cloud Server Hackathon Is it for me? So, what’s in it for me? – […]

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/25/a-story-for-the-hacker-in-you/feed/01&1 COSMO Open Sourcehttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/15/11-cosmo-open-source/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/15/11-cosmo-open-source/#respondMon, 15 Jun 2015 13:08:26 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2793I am glad to announce that 1&1 open sourced COSMO, our CalDAV Calendar server to the calendaring community. You will find below some general info on 1&1 open sourcing but also more details about COSMO server. History In 2012, in Bucharest Mail and Media division, a new team was created with the goal to develop […]

]]>I am glad to announce that 1&1 open sourced COSMO, our CalDAV Calendar server to the calendaring community. You will find below some general info on 1&1 open sourcing but also more details about COSMO server.

History

In 2012, in Bucharest Mail and Media division, a new team was created with the goal to develop a new Calendar solution. Soon after start, analyzing the information on calendaring, we decided to base the solution on an open source CalDAV server: Cosmo from Chandler. Chandler, which has his own interesting history behind, (see more details here) was a closed project since 2008 when the community around it stopped developing the product. Considering the implications, we developed the server with the goal to be able to give COSMO back to open source community in the future.

1&1 and OPEN SOURCE

I will not cover here the benefits of open sourcing or when it make sense to open source your code. I will provide some info on how to do it when all the other aspects are clarified.

Even if there are no hard rules to follow in 1&1 if you want to open source the code, it is very important to be fully transparent on your intentions from the beginning. First start discussing this with your Team Lead and make sure you have the full support of your team.

Steps to follow are easy and well described. There is also a dedicated InsideOne Open Source Wall where you can ask questions or read about other the experiences your colleagues had with open sourcing. As a side note, during the process we discovered that most of the 1&1 projects open-sourced are published under 1&1 Github account (hosting now almost 60 projects). However if your project is big enough it can also be published as a standalone one from the start or in two steps.

Getting starting with COSMO

Now coming back to COSMO.

The project contains only CalDAV core of our Calendar application. It provides an API that contains abstractions over CalDAV and iCal specific objects and a plugin mechanism that allows developers to write custom logic without having to alter Cosmo Core code.

The goal is to keep this architecture simple and easy to understand and extend, separating specific implementations from protocol related ones.

After downloading it into project root directory you only need to run the mvn tomcat7:run-warand the calendar server will be packaged, tested and run. Then you can use the COSMO API from any calendar client running CalDAV protocol. Below you will find the steps to configure Mozilla Lightening client and use it with the COSMO server.

Install the Lightning Thunderbird add-on and restart Thunderbird.

Press Alt + D to open the “File” menu.

In the “New” submenu, select “Calendar”.

Select the “On the Network” option and then “Next” to continue.

Select the “CalDav” format.

In the “Location” field, enter the path “http://localhost:8080/cosmo/dav/.

Click “Next”.

So, in a few steps you will have a basic calendar solution up and running.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/15/11-cosmo-open-source/feed/0Key Internet Players met in Bucharest to discuss the future of calendaringhttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/11/key-internet-players-met-in-bucharest-to-discuss-the-future-of-calendaring/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/11/key-internet-players-met-in-bucharest-to-discuss-the-future-of-calendaring/#respondThu, 11 Jun 2015 15:44:44 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2779 CalConnect (The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium; www.CalConnect.org) held its thirty-third edition conference in Bucharest, Romania, on May 18-22, 2015. The consortium is a partnership among leading technology organizations and universities to promote open standards and the interoperability of calendaring systems to give users more choices when it comes to devices and calendaring applications. A […]

CalConnect (The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium; www.CalConnect.org) held its thirty-third edition conference in Bucharest, Romania, on May 18-22, 2015. The consortium is a partnership among leading technology organizations and universities to promote open standards and the interoperability of calendaring systems to give users more choices when it comes to devices and calendaring applications. A list of its members can be viewed here.

The host of this international event was 1&1 Internet Development, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 1&1 Group, the leading European internet specialist.
The project took place at the 1&1 facilities and featured interoperability testing events, symposia, meetings, and roundtable discussions, the same agenda that already proved its great success, attracting each edition participants from more than 3 continents and the biggest names of the IT industry. This year in Romania, Apple, Google, IBM, 1&1 and many more, have accepted the invitation to meet and discuss the future of calendaring and interoperability.

It was structured as a 3 day interoperability test event, followed by a 2 day conference in order to support the practical hands-on testing/reviewing and the theoretical discussions.
“Hosting such an event for the first time in Romania, was a challenge but when you think of its mission, to offer solutions that allow calendar and scheduling methodologies to interoperate, so that at one point they will enter the mainstream of computing, you see a greater purpose. It’s not just an event, it’s a way to go forward” – said Wolfgang Gunne, General Manager 1&1 Internet Development

Interoperability is a property of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, without any restricted access or implementation. In other words, thanks to these events, the final customers will be able to keep track of the same schedule, disregarding the platform or device they are using. Having a practical example: booking a time frame, from our device, our calendar tool, to any other device (which may be completely different, both software and
hardware), could not be possible without interoperability.

The highlights sessions of this edition included Embedding Calendar Data in Media (QRCODE, Data URI), Changes to the scheduling model, Sending invitations through other means than e-mail, RSCALE: NonGregorian Recurrence Rules in iCalendar and Calendaring Systems in General (solar, luni-solar, etc.) and were available for registration to any organization or software developer that had a clear objective in improving the effectiveness of calendaring and sharing.
Full information about the conference may be found at CalConnect XXXIII website.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/06/11/key-internet-players-met-in-bucharest-to-discuss-the-future-of-calendaring/feed/01&1 Internet Development moves to Sky Tower to provide its employees the best workplace on the markethttp://blog.1and1.ro/2015/01/07/11-internet-development-moves-to-sky-tower-to-provide-its-employees-the-best-workplace-on-the-market/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/01/07/11-internet-development-moves-to-sky-tower-to-provide-its-employees-the-best-workplace-on-the-market/#respondWed, 07 Jan 2015 09:31:45 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=27711&1 Internet Development a wholly-owned subsidiary of 1&1 Group, the leading European internet specialist, is relocating its offices to Sky Tower, one of the most modern office buildings in Bucharest, a new landmark of the capital city. The software development center established in 2003 in Romania, with almost 300 active employees at this moment, is […]

1&1 Internet Development a wholly-owned subsidiary of 1&1 Group, the leading European internet specialist, is relocating its offices to Sky Tower, one of the most modern office buildings in Bucharest, a new landmark of the capital city. The software development center established in 2003 in Romania, with almost 300 active employees at this moment, is considered by media and employer branding studies, as one of the companies that made a significant leap forward in 2014 “Top 20 companies to work for in the IT industry” study, thanks to their recent actions that support the general employee satisfaction.

This move also aims at creating better working conditions and building a work environment around the most important asset of the company: employees.

“We were looking for an environment to meet two conditions: firstly, to meet our group’s standards in terms of quality of working space and in the same time to provide our employees in Romania the best conditions for boosting their potential within a great working environment. I think that this is a great way of telling our employees that the company appreciates and respects their work and rewards it with a state of the art working place, too”, said Wolfgang Gunne, General Manager 1&1 Internet Development.

The relocation has been completed on December 15th, when all the staff of 1&1 has occupied 3 floors of the Sky Tower building on Calea Floreasca 246C.

“SkyTower is a modern and efficient building and a new architectural symbol of Bucharest, changing not only the city’s skyline, but also the perspective on office space characteristics in the heart of the capital. We are delighted with the relocation of 1&1 Internet Development in SkyTower and the chance to offer our services to all of our existing and future clients. We focus on customer satisfaction and strive to improve employee experience as much as possible. We even provide employees in the building with a wonderful discount card, a singular product in Bucharest, which offers attractive discounts in various partner stores in the shopping areas nearby. We are confident that the offices will meet all expectations of 1&1 Internet Development and we look forward to a beautiful partnership,” said Ruxandra Grinzeanu, General Manager SkyTower Building.

With own recreation rooms and small-professional cafeterias inside the office space, with an innovative climate control system that uses only fresh air(no air re-usage), with parking spaces for cars, bicycle racks and having even own showers, with more and easier to reach side activities such as shopping, eateries or leisure facilities, the company is interested to provide employees the best workplace on the market.

Commuting to SkyTower is also easy, as the building is very close to the subway station Aurel Vlaicu, has access to large boulevards and the number of bus/tram stops in the near vicinity facilitate any travel plans.

“Work at 1&1 Internet Development is fascinating for any software developer thanks to the products we develop, technologies we use and a great team making it all possible. Now, thanks to this relocation, it becomes more enjoyable than ever”, Wolfgang Gunne said.

1&1 Internet Development thus completes a new leg in the maturity process, following extensive recruiting campaigns during the last 3 years. The company plans to keep recruiting high level IT specialists(Software Developer, Software Architect, System Architect, Quality Engineer, User Experience Designer, Operations Engineer, Product Owner, Business Engineer, Scrum Master, Delivery Manager) for certain technologies and competencies, in order to best respond to global trends on internet development.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2015/01/07/11-internet-development-moves-to-sky-tower-to-provide-its-employees-the-best-workplace-on-the-market/feed/0Bug Friday, in Domains Apps – the legendhttp://blog.1and1.ro/2014/11/10/bug-friday-in-domains-apps-the-legend/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/11/10/bug-friday-in-domains-apps-the-legend/#respondMon, 10 Nov 2014 08:47:28 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2757Once upon a time … It was a chill Friday morning, mist was setting around and no one was to be seen. Only the steps of heavy armors and blades tingeling were to be heard. But suddenly the noise grew much closer and then heroes hardened in battles walk the path of DSSA Camp passing […]

It was a chill Friday morning, mist was setting around and no one was to be seen. Only the steps of heavy armors and blades tingeling were to be heard. But suddenly the noise grew much closer and then heroes hardened in battles walk the path of DSSA Camp passing by.

Lots of work was to be done before the first horn will announce the beginning of the battle. Speakers were set, playlists were made, keyboards were sharpened and when Commodore entered the War Room, everybody was present to see the Battle Plan and Rules of Engagement.

At 10:00 sharp, the first ray of light pierced the dense mist, in a couple of minutes the skies were clean and you could see two mighty armies gathering on each side of the battle field. First, the Bug Army lead by fearsome CX bug general, the second army, DSSA Band of Heroes, lead by Commodore SpaceCowboy.

First horn of the battle announced the first attack, both armies rushed against each other and the battle started. Angular hero managed to take down 2 bugs with just a swing of a keyboard and deadly injured a third one, next to him UX Master crushed another enemy with his mouse knife, and 3 with his magical keyboard staff. On the other side of the battlefield another hero (which will not be named in here for privacy reasons), although injured and staying home, with his mind powers took down another 2 bugs.

Half way, the battle, was stopped because both sides need a break to replenish life and spell power. Our heroes had plenty of treats to choose from.

Second horn of the battle announced the beginning of the second clash. WitchDoctor cast a spell from his AppleWand and another 4 bugs disappeared. Right next to him SilentJokeMaster and SpicyGeek raise the axes and another 2 bugs were vanquished. On a black horse Smiley girl pierced another 3 bugs with her Enter spear. The last hero to be mentioned in here is the one that ended the battle in DSSA favour, Mike dodged the last attack of the last 4 remaining bugs and finished them with his poisonous arrows.

This was not an easy fight. DSSA Heroes were outnumbered 2 to 1, but they managed to achieve victory. At the end of the day no bugs were standing, only the armours and blades of the DSSA were shining in the down light.

The rest of the winning party is to be written by the poets and singed by the bards.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/11/10/bug-friday-in-domains-apps-the-legend/feed/0Android Browser SOP bypasshttp://blog.1and1.ro/2014/10/24/android-browser-sop-bypass/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/10/24/android-browser-sop-bypass/#respondFri, 24 Oct 2014 12:34:58 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2744For the past couple of weeks, everyone has been talking and focusing on the Shellshock exploit. This might put another serious vulnerability found in all pre-4.4 versions of Android a little in the background. Nevertheless, the Android Browser SOP bypass is a very serious vulnerability, as it allows an attacker to read the contents of […]

]]>For the past couple of weeks, everyone has been talking and focusing on the Shellshock exploit. This might put another serious vulnerability found in all pre-4.4 versions of Android a little in the background.

Nevertheless, the Android Browser SOP bypass is a very serious vulnerability, as it allows an attacker to read the contents of other tabs in a browser when a user visits a page the attacker controls. The vulnerability was first disclosed in late August 2014, but there has not been much in the way of public discussion of it. Exploiting the flaw is a straightforward matter and allows the attacker to bypass the same-origin policy in the Android browser.

The bug applies to the Android Open Source Platform (ASOP) browser, an older browser that Google no longer supports. Starting with Android 4.4 (KitKat) Google has replaced the AOSP browser with Chrome, but the browser still runs on many older devices and there are ways to install it on newer devices, as well.

The flaw is present in all pre-4.4 versions of the Android. This represents a huge percentage of the Android devices in use right now. According to researchers, about 75% of the total Android ecosystem today uses pre-4.4 versions. Moreover, Android 4.2 (Jellybean) and prior phones account for nearly 100% of off-the-shelf, lower-end prepaid phones from major manufacturers and carriers. They still ship the unsupported AOSP browser. These are the kinds of phones that account for a huge chunk of total market share, and yet are still vulnerable to this bug.

What is the Same-Origin Policy?

The security model known as the “same origin” policy is one of the most important security mechanisms that are applied in modern browsers. It prevents some types of content from being accessed or modified if the file exists on another domain. Basically, the idea behind the SOP is that it prevents JavaScript from one origin from getting or setting properties of a document on another origin.

The origin of a document is formed by the combination of scheme, domain and port with the port being an exception to IE. There are some exceptions with SOP such the location property, or objects wtih src attribute.

In short, the same-origin policy restricts how a document or script loaded from one origin can interact with a resource from another origin.

What are the implications?

What this means is that any website that you visit (e.g. one controlled by an attacker) can access and read the contents for any other webpage that you have open. So, for example, if you would be logged into your webmail account, or internet banking account, and visit a malicious page in a different tab, the attacker can easily read anything from your email or internet banking account. Even worse, the attacker could easily take a copy of your session cookie and impersonate your account.

How does it work?

A SOP bypass occurs when a siteA.com is somehow able to access the properties of siteB.com such as cookies, location, response etc.

The vulnerability is really simple to exploit and it works by malforming a javascript URL handler with a prepended null byte. In this case, the AOSP browser fails to enforce the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) browser security control.

Proof of Concept

The code above tries accessing the document.domain property of a site loaded into an iframe. If you run the POC at attacker.com on any of the modern browsers, it would return an error as attacker.com should not be able to access the document.domain property of rhainfosec.com. However, running it on any of the vulnerable smart phones default browsers would alert the document.domain property indicating that the SOP was not able to restrict the access to document.domain property of a site at a different origin.

You can also read the response of any page by accessing the document.body.innerHTML property:

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/10/24/android-browser-sop-bypass/feed/0Brought to you by the 1&1 Blog Infrastructurehttp://blog.1and1.ro/2014/07/03/brought-to-you-by-the-11-blog-infrastructure/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/07/03/brought-to-you-by-the-11-blog-infrastructure/#respondThu, 03 Jul 2014 09:40:50 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2732This year, the spring brought more than just fresh air and sunny days; it brought exciting changes in the 1&1 Blog Infrastructure and in the online presence of the company. We’ve started at the end of March with a redesign of the blog for the German market. For this, first we started with a totally […]

This year, the spring brought more than just fresh air and sunny days; it brought exciting changes in the 1&1 Blog Infrastructure and in the online presence of the company.

We’ve started at the end of March with a redesign of the blog for the German market. For this, first we started with a totally new theme, developed by an external agency named First Square, and deployed on a new multi-site WordPress environment.

While it might look trivial, it wasn’t a walk in the park. One of the first tasks was getting in touch and setting up a common ground to work on with First Square. On an everyday basis, we might take for granted all the terminologies and small processes we have in place, but when talking with somebody from outside the company, suddenly clear communication becomes a key factor that will make or break the project. No JIRA to share tasks and bugs, no SVN for a common code repository, no “I’ll just drop by your desk and see what’s wrong”, its back to the basics of emails and telephones. However, I am happy to say we worked great and I now have a new appreciation for how much easier things are when sharing a common methodology.

Having the blog theme set up and ready, we handled the next big task of the project: the content migration. For the German blog, this meant migrating more than 1500 articles from the old blog system as well as around 450 articles from the Online Success Center platform. The end result was a blog that is a great source of information for the company, with topics ranging from company and product information to tips and tricks for the online success of the companies that use 1&1 products. The same thing had to happen for the US blog, that was launched with new content as well as articles migrated from the US Online Success Center.

A great deal of support came from the PR departments that was very involved at all stages of the project, from setting up the requirements with the Romanian team and FirstSquare to updating the content in order to better tailor the articles for the visitors.

With the blog live for Germany, U.S.A. and France we’re not going to stop here. We aim to have a company blog in each country 1&1 is active in, so expect blogs to be launched each week.

If you wish to see a detailed description of ‘Before and After’ for the 1&1 Blogs you may have a look here.

The blogs were not the only PR site updated as we’re launching Newsrooms in each country. If the blogs aim information to the customers, the Newsroom will have press releases provided in a fresh design. Here, again we’ve went in and imported hundreds of press releases from the venerable Press Tool, but this one was a little bit trickier since we moved content between totally unrelated systems. The great online WordPress community provided us with tools that allowed us to do this in an easy and painless manner so, with a little bit of tinkering, everything worked smoothly.

The newsrooms for Germany and U.S.A. are already live (why don’t you drop by and see for yourself the fresh new design provided by First Square) and we’re preparing the releases for the rest of the countries in the following weeks.

The last piece of the plan will be launching the Company Page, a site that will display all the relevant information about 1&1 in one great looking site. However, this will come at a later moment, so keep an eye out for the official announcement.

With all this sites (24 to be more precise) going live, it’s worth mentioning the software update to WordPress Multisite. This will give us a unified, easy to work with platform for all WordPress based sites that 1&1 has or will need to launch in the future. Creating a new site becomes a problem of just clicking a few buttons, configuring a theme and connecting the domains to the system. Without this, launching so many sites in such a short time would have been truly impossible.

]]>http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/07/03/brought-to-you-by-the-11-blog-infrastructure/feed/0STAR loading…http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/03/07/star-loading/
http://blog.1and1.ro/2014/03/07/star-loading/#respondFri, 07 Mar 2014 11:14:12 +0000https://blog-admin.1and1.ro/?p=2714This is a guest post written by Scoala de Valori More than a month from its start, the STAR adventure is in full development, and the 30 high school students passionately keep working on the software applications. We are happy to see that the Scoala de Valori and 1&1 project has had such a success […]

More than a month from its start, the STAR adventure is in full development, and the 30 high school students passionately keep working on the software applications. We are happy to see that the Scoala de Valori and 1&1 project has had such a success with the youngsters and has been so very welcomed by all the participants!

The teenagers became so enthusiastic with STAR, because it gives them the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice and also leave a personal mark on a team project, developed under the supervision of professionals. STAR presented them both with the chance to learn new programming languages and with a support for personal development, by putting their full potential to work. The students highly appreciated the openness of all their collaborators within this project, the 1&1 mentors and the team from Scoala de Valori.

“The development of this project was based on the wish to invest in the potential of these teenagers and hopefully offer them a practical teaching experience, combined with some basics for personal development to help them improve their teamwork competences, their presentation and time management skills and their cooperation willingness. The collaboration with the company 1&1 came as a plus, offering these youngsters a teaching environment totally different from the one from school, the one they have been accustomed with so far, and an accurate practical context very close to the current business environment from the IT&C industry.” Ștefan Pălărie, Head of Corporate Engagement, Școala de Valori

Usually the persons working in the IT industry are considered to be more distant and secluded. The high school students were surprised to find behind the specialists from 1&1 open and friendly individuals, willing to share their knowledge with their trainees.

Besides the technical workshops, the Scoala de Valori team held three other workshops on teamwork, leadership and ethics and value, where the students identified their strong and weak points and also improved their self confidence.

“We have a great collaboration with the team from 1&1 and are very happy to work together at this project! They understand the importance of values and soft skills, besides the technical experience; a successful professional needs not only practical knowledge but also instruments that highlight his/her qualities. One must know how to work in a team and organize the given time so as to make the best out of it. We appreciate the openness and willingness of the 1&1 team, as well as the passion and implication they gave to the STAR project, things for which we are highly appreciative!“ Diana David, Project Manager STAR, Școala de Valori

We wish for the STAR experience to be an impulse for the further development of many more teen dedicated projects, in collaboration with companies able to offer these young students full personal and professional development programs!